The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick spirit of the man within.

The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would have offered the few years that might be 244 his, without question or halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ. Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to receive the secret of another’s soul he puts his life in pledge for the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by any perplexities or confusion.

Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous, battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory of living, the life of a boy he loved––that was another matter. Never had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure.

But was it possible that God would have allowed 245 things to come to that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done foolishly––and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly.

What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart.

He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he, Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority.

When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed themselves on Ruth’s face. She was convinced that this girl knew that 246 Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at the last moment.

Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then? Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on denying?

Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it who had been born to the Faith.

Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away 247 in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting’s story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.

When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell Rafe Gadbeau’s secret as to ask it from the Bishop.

But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for her!

When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady word––“Nothing.”

Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a 249 frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.

She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand, she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe understood. Even M’sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business with God.

She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.

He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:

Mon Pere, je me ’cuse.

The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the thread of the story. 250 When she had finished and was weeping quietly, the Bishop prompted gently.

“And now? my daughter.”

“And now, Mon Pere, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. Mon Pere, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before men and call my love a murderer. Consider, Mon Pere. There is another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, Mon Pere, I am guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the path of the fire because he feared those other men.

“But see, Mon Pere, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe. And they 251 will not hurt a girl much,” she said, dropping back upon her native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. “The railroad does not care who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the court will believe, as I shall tell it.”

“But, my daughter,” said the Bishop, temporising. “It would not be true. We must not lie.”

“But M’sieur the Bishop, himself,” the girl argued swiftly, evidently separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his public walk, “he himself, on the stand––”

The girl stopped abruptly.

The Bishop held the silence of the grave.

“Mon Pere will make me tell, then––the truth,” she began. “Mon Pere, I cannot! I––!”

“Let us consider,” the Bishop broke in deliberately. “Suppose he had told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him: Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed. Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?”

“To escape Hell,” said the girl quickly, “yes. He would have said: Tell everything; tell anything!” In the desolate forlornness of her grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly––and had loved him. Would always love him.

“We will not speak of Hell,” said the Bishop 252 gently. “In that hour he would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell.”

“But he confessed to M’sieur the Bishop himself,” she retorted quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral Theology back upon him with a vengeance, “and he gave him no leave to speak.”

The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.

“If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?”

“Mon Pere, with the bones of my hands!”

“Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know here––Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and cries: Seigneur Dieu, whither go I?

“And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open place. Would he come back to the world?

“And he answers: ‘No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and another man’s life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward with that debt unpaid.’

“Then God: ‘And is there none to cancel the 253 debt? Is there not one in all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none loved you who will pay the debt?’

“And he will answer with a lifted heart: ‘My God, yes; there was one, a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right; only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt will be right; my God, let me go.’”

The Bishop’s French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions that every woman craves for and clings to.

“This,” the Bishop was going on quietly, “is the new man we are to consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people, who do not matter at all?

“Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of Ruth Lansing. It is because 254 the man you loved calls back to you, from where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He would have you tell.”

“Mon Pere, I will tell the tale,” said the girl simply as she rose from her knees. “I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage.”

The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse and sent for Dardis.

“This girl,” he told the lawyer, “has a story to tell. I think you would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her down.”

Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God.

As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another. Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he 255 clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued.

Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people knew that it was true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved, and who, he was sure, loved him.

It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie––or maybe she did not consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took from him his interest in every other fact in the world.

Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had 256 never before in her life told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she had stood up there and lied.

For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!

It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it.

He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of life.

Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.

He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the 257 jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?

Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did not seem to notice the Judge’s anger in cautioning him not to mention the fire again.

At his counsel’s direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.

Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a simple story. The thing might 258 have happened. It was entirely credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though puzzled by the manner of the recital.

Even Lemuel Squires’ harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her church.

When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called. He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires would begin his speech at once.

He noticed that this witness was a girl from 259 French Village whom he had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau’s girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything, and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn’t the poor little thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let them hurt her.

Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very beginning:

“Four years ago,” she said, “Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the price of his silence.

“Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one to help get the people 260 to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do, for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon him.

“At times he said to me, ‘Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and that will be the end of all.’ But I said, ‘Non, non, mon Rafe, we will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.’”

Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop’s advice, to let her get through with it in her own way.

“But it was not time for us to marry yet,” she went on. “Then came the morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of my aunt’s house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to hang up in the hot sun to dry.” The Judge turned impatiently on his bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed angrily at him. Who was he to 261 shrug his shoulders! Was it not important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the Judge gave her the most rigid attention.

“Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he was troubled. ‘What is it, mon Rafe?’ I asked. He groaned and said one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six horses. ‘What to do, mon Rafe?’ ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘though I can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.’

“‘You will not go, mon Rafe. Promise me you will not go. Hide away, and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married––me, I do not care for the grand wedding in the church here––and then we will get away to Beaupre. Promise me.’

“‘Bien, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.’

“But it was a man’s promise. I knew he would go in the end.

“I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands.

“When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back 262 there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much suffering.

“In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that Rogers kept him always near him.

“I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear.

“I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned.

“The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face. The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young Whiting had not fired at all.

“I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. ‘Come with me, mon Rafe,’ I called. ‘I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will 263 cover all. None will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.’

“But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.

“But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other men, the old M’sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him and the fire.”

She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.

“Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God, who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God took him away.

“That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe.”

Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its naÏve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily her own unthought, clipped expressions than they 264 would any more connected elaborations he might try to make her give.

Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case. But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl’s story was true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it was true.

His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing. The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.

It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put aside the girl’s dramatic story. He was still convinced that the prisoner was guilty. But––the girl’s story was true. His mind was not nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.

The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these hampering limitations 265 of mind. He had always regarded the taking and discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.

He charged the jury that the girl’s testimony was no more credible than that of a dozen other witnesses––which was quite true. All had told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act. No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.

He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an agreement.

The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.

Jeffrey Whiting stood up.

The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:

“Not guilty.”

The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.

Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a prisoner and brought him to his mother.

Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother’s eyes as he stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they had done to his little mother, that would 267 rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.

And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man’s name.

Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice he said brutally:

“You lied!”

Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words. Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his ear that he was right, or 268 try to tell him why she had not been able to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the line of death.

When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.

The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him. They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them––the hill people were not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which he was quick to notice.

During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.

When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full news of the last four weeks.

It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only as they contributed to the general result.

Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as impersonal and detached 270 as the details in any business transaction. Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely incidental.

Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now gone––a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been Rogers’ assistant, was gone––another broken tool. The fire had been used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting had been put out of the way––definitely, the railroad had hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.

Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.

The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers’ death and had instantly set to work to use that as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with 271 what seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands which the railroad coveted.

They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?

Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit the railroad’s purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed them. It struck in the dark, and no man’s hand could be raised to 272 punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of officials.

The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a claim, for the mere privilege of living.

When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red sun going down in the west, 273 were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men’s names were written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly needful.

Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

The mention of the girl’s name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond him.

At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.

Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!

If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their own.

If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it, were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was their own?

If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months. They would have sheriffs’ posses out against them. They would have to fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia, but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their people!

Some men would die. But some men always 276 died, in every cause. And in the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!

Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?

Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.

Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at Leavit’s bridge.